Summary

The Associated Press (AP) has again asked a federal judge to lift its ban from White House events, arguing the Trump administration is escalating retaliation over its refusal to adopt Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.

The AP says the White House has restricted its access further, including barring a photographer from Air Force One’s arrival.

Trump dismissed AP as “radical left lunatics.”

Major news organizations, including Trump-friendly outlets, urged the administration to reverse the ban, calling it a press freedom violation.

A second court hearing is set for March 20.

  • NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    I argued in another thread that AP is a pretty unbiased news outlet. I did not realise it had been labelled as a “far left” news source.

    I was arguing its neutrality to someone who was saying an AP article was pro-Trump for not directly denouncing some decision of his.

    My brain might explode today.

    • Tinidril@midwest.social
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      You are confusing “unbiased” and “neutral”. If one party is telling nothing but lies and the other party is telling only the truth, a neutral news source will tell you all about the ensuring drama, what the polls say, and how it might impact the next election. What they won’t tell you is who is lying and who is telling the truth. Most mainstream news coverage is neutral and that’s a big part of how most Americans are ignorant and misinformed.

      Unbiased reporting actually cares about the truth and will report it even if that means taking sides in the political debate. Unbiased reporting is very leftist friendly because most leftists care very much about representing reality in their opinions.

      • ödd (they/them)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        the moment that something touched by a human bias exists, “unbiased” is a loaded term devoid of meaning when we are talking about humans and our information

        • Tinidril@midwest.social
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          Bias always exists for any non-trivial topic, but there is also a gradient from less biased to more biased. Using “unbiased” is something some people do to mask our autism. Your point is correct but utterly worthless. It’s also an excuse that many weak minded people use for failing to rise above our post-truth culture.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      Yes, a lot of lemmings think an outlet that isn’t explicitly left wing as fuck is evil

  • commander@lemmings.world
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    1 day ago

    There needs to be term-limits for all elected positions in government.

    The idea of the “career-politician” needs to go away.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      Sure, in general that would be great, but I don’t see how that would solve the current issue. Trump was a complete outsider before running for President.

      • Echolynx@lemmy.zip
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        He was enabled by many of his fellow geriatrics from Congress in the first term.

        • jonne@infosec.pub
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          1 day ago

          Eh, the newer members that were elected in his wake are even more sycophantic. It’s not like there’s any never Trump Republicans that got elected since.

          Again, not against the proposal, it would be great to have senators that have used a computer before writing laws in this digital age, but I don’t think it would help against this sort of a scenario.

  • tal
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    1 day ago

    I mean, the White House isn’t obligated to talk to the press at all. It’s violating convention here, but not rules. It can, if it wants, only permit in news media that it thinks will provide favorable coverage. And a great deal of what the White House does is to try to put a spin on what the administration is doing, and it does get to select which press representatives it talks to, even if usually, it doesn’t try to use that as leverage as much.

    The flip side of that is that, though, is that the press isn’t obligated to talk to the White House at all. I mean, I assume that Trump has no shortage of critics who would like the media to give them eyeball time with the public, don’t mind talking to the press, and will cheerfully provide them with all the material they want.

    The traditional media might be less important than it was at one point, but I’m not sure that it’s a good communications strategy to just ignore it.

    “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told Lewis. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

    You’re probably not flooding them with shit if you’re not talking to them.

    • MuskyMelon@lemmy.world
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      The flip side of that is that, though, is that the press isn’t obligated to talk to the White House at all.

      This. AP should just report the White House news scrubbed of all the biases that Trump prefers and see how they like that.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      And it’s such a weird hill to die on. It’s actually one of the things where I don’t believe there’s any ambiguity about whether he has the right to do it. Unless Congress has named it, he can do that and you just have to deal with the fact that this government will call that body of water the Gulf of America.

      It’s obviously a stupid thing to do, but out of all the things to take a stand on, it’s just weird, especially after almost a decade of sanewashing his bullshit.

      Then again, there hasn’t been any point to having a press pool follow the President in decades, they’re just stenographers, you might as well just read the press releases and type them up instead. Or do real journalism by getting information from sources you’ve cultivated relationships with.